Travel Day & Luggage Update

Today is a travel day. These are fun days for me, because it means I don’t have to be on the first flight in the morning to my destination. (Which are usually around 7am – yikes!) I’m a sleeper, so I was psyched to get some serious shut-eye and actually wake up when it’s light outside. As you can see above, my friends at Pittsburg State gave me a cool shirt that says “PITT” on it. I love it. Thanks guys! I drove 2.5 hours back up to Kansas City, hopped on a flight to Denver and caught a connecting flight to Orange County, California. One thing that always makes me sad when flying to the OC is when I look out the airplane window and see the burned forests where a fire had ripped through. Things are always more real when you see them first hand rather than on CNN.

Travel days are also good for catching up on random stuff that needs to be mentioned in this blog. Now one of the things that I learned last weekend at the fundraiser is that a ton of people are reading this blog! There’s no real way to check site statistics, so I honestly never knew if my husband was the only person reading it. (And he often does this to see where the hell I am…) But the outpouring of concern over posts like “Where Art Thou, Red Luggage” has assured me otherwise. Since you’re all so concerned about red luggage, here’s the update. After doing some thinking, I decided Red Luggage was bad luck and should be retired. I had bought it several years ago, and she has been good to me…but it was time to be sent out to luggage pasture. (i.e, the basement.) So it was time to shop for new luggage, which is something I take VERY seriously. I went to JC Penny, because they were having a sale. I pulled about 5 luggages off the racks, and was seriously walking around the whole department store with each of them to assess things like wheel function. (Gotta take a test drive, right?) Clearly this earned me some strange looks. But finally I decided on Blue Luggage, pictured above. She’s awesome. And I made a pledge to NEVER check her again. This, of course, means I pack much lighter these days. One of my gay boyfriends recently saw my slim blue luggage and knew I had been gone from home over 7 days. He incrediously stated that I “pack like a straight guy.” Hey, at least my luggage won’t get lost.